When a Hit Musical Becomes a Bad Movie
<em>Dear Evan Hansen</em> was lauded on Broadway, but the film adaptation only emphasizes its flaws.
When premiered on Broadway in 2016, it drew from New York’s theater critics. Ben Platt, playing an anxious teenager who becomes an internet celebrity after misrepresenting his role in a local tragedy, was showered with plaudits, and the show ended up winning six Tony Awards—the most of the season—including Best Musical and a leading-actor trophy for Platt. A film version was thus hardly a surprise. But when the director Stephen Chbosky’s extremely faithful adaptation premiered as the opening-night movie of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival—the movie will be released in theaters this Friday—the reviews that followed were … broadly .
